


Stigmata

by babywarg (morphaileffect)



Series: Ironstrange Bingo [18]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 09:28:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20405461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphaileffect/pseuds/babywarg
Summary: [No Powers, Supernatural AU] Since Stephen was little, mysterious wounds have appeared and disappeared on his body, leaving mysterious scars. His mother says it's because he's one of a Pair, and he's absorbing pain meant for someone else.





	Stigmata

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this prompt](https://ironstrangeprompts.tumblr.com/post/187273308310) for a soulmate AU: **Your scars only show up on your soulmate.**
> 
> Presumes Stephen and Tony are the same age. Things happen similarly to their MCU backstories, but with some tweaks.
> 
> Tread with caution if you’re sensitive to mentions of surgery, scarring and late teen alcohol abuse. There will also be some exploration of Christian religious themes here - I mean absolutely no offense.
> 
> For the Ironstrange Bingo square "Body Swap."

No one thought it was peculiar until little Stephen Strange was around six years old. Before then, he would run around the farm, ride horses, climb trees, get into little accidents - and not even get a scratch.

His father said he must just not have been hurt too badly. Strange men, he boasted, were tough; small falls wouldn’t dent them.

But small, weird cuts would appear on his body - as if he had gotten into _other_ accidents, which his body registered, but never experienced.

Then he started to get bruises. Mostly on his upper arms and face, as if he was occasionally slapped or beaten by someone much bigger.

Understandably, that posed a complication for his parents. They were a good, upstanding family. They would never hurt their beloved Stephen like this.

But his mother knew what was going on. She’d always had suspicions, but it was only when the bruises appeared that she became convinced.

When he was six years old, his mother took Stephen aside to tell him: “You’re one of a Pair.”

She’d had to take him away from his father to say this. And for good reason.

His father was a rational man. His mother was not. His father liked to say this. His father often said his mother was silly and should not be listened to.

“Somewhere out there is your other half. I’ll try to explain it more when you’re older, Stephen. But for now, know that you’re very lucky.”

Paired people were very, very rare, she said. As a little girl, she used to dream that she would find her Pair, and they would get married and live happily ever after.

But the sad fact was, she was not Paired. Neither was the man she married. She was not unhappy, she said, but she often wondered: what if she and the man she loved understood each other more deeply, loved more deeply, knew each other more deeply, like Paired people did?

Stephen asked his mother how people became Paired.

“It begins with a prayer,” she started to say. “A long time ago, long before you were born, there were two people who prayed, at the same time, for two things: one, that one of them would always exist on this Earth at the same time as the other, and two, that they would always feel each other’s pain. The pain that was due to one, would be felt by the other instead. That way, if and when they meet, they will know each other by their scars, and know they’ve found each other again.”

It didn’t make sense to Stephen. He tried to simplify it so that it would.

“The wounds I get,” he asked, “they’re someone else’s?”

His mother nodded.

“Then someone out there is in trouble,” he answered. “I’ve got to find them.”

“You’re too little,” she said, stroking his hair. “When you’re older. In the meantime, take good care of yourself. No more rough play. Remember you’re responsible for someone else’s body, too.”

“But my Pair,” Stephen complained, “I’m the one getting hurt.”

“I know, my love,” his mother said, drawing him close. “Bear it for now. I’ll take care of you. With any luck, the pain won’t be for long. Then, you can find your Pair, and all the pain will end.”

***

It was such a funny thing to believe in, the concept of being Paired...

But then, his mother was religious and believed a great many funny things.

One, that there was a man in the sky who watched over the world, made sure that the good were rewarded and the evil were punished. Two, that there was such a thing as destiny, and she was destined to have a child as special as Stephen.

Even as a child, Stephen had a scientific mind, and he detested irrationality, much like his father did.

He loved his mother very much, but he was sure she was wrong - there must be a scientific explanation for what was happening to him.

As an older child he looked it up, and found a possible name for his affliction:

Stigmata.

Wounds that would mysteriously appear on the body of a worshipper in the throes of religious ecstasy.

But it didn’t make sense. He wasn’t religious. And he _definitely_ wasn't ecstatic.

His mother might believe in saviors from heaven, but Stephen believed only people could save themselves.

And if it was true that he was suffering his Pair’s wounds - well, then his Pair must have been an idiot, and not very good at saving themselves.

The very _idea_ of Pairing simply did not make sense. So he shied away from learning more about it.

At a young age, he decided to go into medicine. He needed to understand his body’s unexplainable betrayals.

He was thankful that the bruises stopped early on. Otherwise, he would have given up his body to medical science as soon as he was legally able, just so he could finally get some real answers.

***

When Stephen was sixteen years old, something happened.

A series of injuries resembling shrapnel wounds appeared all over his body.

As he struggled to breathe, to understand what was happening, his heart failed.

It was almost too late to get him to the hospital. The doctors wondered how he could have survived such an ordeal. Lacerations were found in his heart, as if sharp pieces of metal were trying to get into his bloodstream.

They had to take out his ruined heart, and replace it with an artificial one.

The police report simply said there must have been an explosion of some sort, and Stephen was somehow in its blast range.

But there were no explosions. Stephen had just been walking to school with his two younger siblings, down a quiet suburban street.

His horrified siblings never saw or heard anything explode. They simply saw their eldest brother fall to his knees as if shot, then collapse bleeding onto the sidewalk.

Stephen’s father ranted and railed about the cost of the operation. His mother was simply silent. In the end, they were both glad that Stephen was alive, though they expressed it differently.

Stephen was not in a pleasant mood when he was finally well enough to speak to his family.

“If Pairing is for real,” he said alone to his mother, “I’m going to find my Pair. I’m going to make them pay for this.”

His mother cautioned him to calm down. He was still healing. He should not overexert his new heart.

“Stephen,” she said cautiously, “I didn’t want to talk about this until you’re all better. But...there’s something you may want to think about.

“You see, what happened to you...could have killed anyone else. There’s a chance your Pair is already dead.”

***

They might be dead.

Their scars were all over his body, but they might be dead.

Stephen laughed at the irony of it.

His Pair had left this world, taking his heart along with them.

And had left him with a multitude of scars, a lasting memory of pain and fear.

No. There was no such thing as Pairing. No such thing as pain inflicted psychically over long distances.

He had a bad heart. That was all. And a body prone to spontaneous inflammation.

He had to be logical. Had to be positive. He was alive, and that meant he had more time to figure his own body out.

Scientifically. Rationally.

And if Pairing was real - if it was true his Pair was already dead - then at the very least, he no longer had anything to worry about.

***

But after losing his heart, Stephen changed.

He entered university and became wilder. More reckless. Part of it was teenage hormones, he was sure, maybe some post-surgical depression, PTSD...

And part of it might have been the thought that his Pair was dead.

He accepted that about himself. He wanted to think of himself as a cold, unsentimental creature...but the thought that he was all alone, when he might never have been alone before, still ate away at him.

He was no longer one of a Pair. There would be no more bruises. No more pain.

No more anything.

He drank, even if he was cautioned not to. He got into fights. He did all the things that would have killed someone with an artificial heart.

He explored his limits.

Until one day, he found where they lay.

While driving drunk one evening, he drove his car off the road, and into a low cliff.

The airbag saved him. He woke up in the hospital bed with barely a scrape.

Except.

His hands had been pierced through and through by the metal of the mangled dashboard. They’d had to peel bits of steel off the flesh of his fingers, then stitch his bones and skin back together.

The doctors were sure the nerves would not heal right, and that the damage would last a lifetime...

But when Stephen awoke, there was not a single scar on his hands. Not a single sign of nerve or bone injury.

Just like what had been his heart, the doctors couldn’t explain it, either.

His mother only thought this was a good sign. A blessed sign.

“You were saved,” she said to him. “your Pair saved you. It was the will of the Lord.”

This meant, she elaborated, that Stephen’s Pair must still be alive. Else, how could his wounds have gone away so quickly?

They must have gone somewhere else.

***

Stephen learned his lessons about recklessness from that accident, and pushed everything else to the back of his mind.

He focused on learning biology and medicine. Things he could memorize, analyze, and put together.

New wounds and bruises rarely showed up after the accident, so his “stigmata” no longer mattered as much. Perhaps it was merely some sort of childhood illness, after all - one that no longer bore any relevance to his adult existence.

Things like Pairing and the Lord’s will and having been saved...they didn’t have a place in his life anymore.

He became a doctor. A good one. Then a damn great one. Humbled by his robotic heart and his unpredictable body, understanding that either one could fail him at any time, he dedicated his life to doing good.

If he was going to die at any time, he said to himself, he was going to spend his last breath working at a hospital, where he, with the surgical skills afforded to him by his extremely steady hands, could do the most good.

Many, many years later, he would come across a major sponsor of the hospital where he currently worked: a famous man. A familiar face, which had seen media coverage perhaps one too many times.

A man whose hands were hidden away within red leather gloves, whose unsteady grip was nonetheless equal in strength to his own.

***

There was something about this man, Stephen realized: something magnetic.

Clearly the man thought the same, because soon after their first meeting, he asked Stephen out on a date.

Stephen accepted without hesitation.

When they met at the restaurant the man had booked, they quickly settled into an easy sort of camaraderie, chatted and laughed together effortlessly.

It felt as if they had known each other for a long, long time.

They were making introductions, but it felt more like old friends catching up. So the man - Tony - was a tech mogul and visionary. He had bad hands, but he had people and machines that could bring his ideas to life, so it was never much of a hindrance to him. There was just a longing, a _knowing_ that if his hands were in better shape, he could have done much more.

But Tony thought it was curious that Stephen had an artificial heart. And that he’d lost his real one under mysterious circumstances when he was sixteen.

Tony, himself, was no stranger to mysterious things.

“When I was sixteen, I was abducted,” Tony said nonchalantly, as if telling a mildly interesting anecdote to an old friend. “They blew up the car that was going to take me to school. I was knocked out by the explosion. When I woke up, my kidnappers had hooked up a battery-powered magnet to my heart, because there were bits of shrapnel threatening to enter my veins. That magnet kept me alive until I escaped and got to a hospital...but afterwards, there wasn’t a scratch on my heart. Not a single one.

“And then my hands...to this day, I don’t know what happened to them. I was on vacation in Italy with a girl, I think I was eighteen or so. FOMO after a traumatic experience, you know...

“Suddenly, I just felt this enormous, shredding _pain_. It was so bad I blacked out. When I woke up in a hospital in Rome, they told me they had to operate on my hands. Eleven stainless steel pins in the bones. Some of the bones were almost disintegrated, as if I’d been in some sort of car crash.

“But, as the girl I was with could testify, there was _no_ crash! My hands just broke. For absolutely no external reason.

“My butler, Jarvis, who’s been with me since I was a kid, keeps telling me about this thing called Pairing - where a person who’s been Paired with you since _before_ you were born gets to take all of your pain. They get all of your wounds and scars, while you get theirs.

“So when I got injured, he scoured the news in the region for anyone in Italy who’d been in any sort of vehicular accident resulting in severe hand injuries. He believed that people felt each other’s pain only through short distances, you see. He found a grand total of two people - but none of their injuries matched mine.

“Well, that’s my unsolved mystery. I don’t put much stock in superstition, but sometimes, things like this make you wonder. How about you? Do you believe in Pairs, and stuff like that?”

Stephen only met Tony’s gaze levelly.

When Tony was done speaking, he slowly, carefully answered:

“When I was eighteen, I was in a car accident. It was my fault: I wasn’t in a good place, and I drove the car off the road. I was mostly all right, but my hands should have been destroyed. The thing is, there was not a single thing wrong with them, after the doctors were done stitching them back together.”

Tony stared at him wide-eyed. Things seemed to fall into place for him, as well.

A heaviness lay between them. The weight of too long an absence from each other’s lives.

“You took the fall for me,” Tony said in almost a whisper.

_I would have done it all over again,_ Stephen wanted to say, _my long-sought, my other half_. Except there was no logical reason at all for him to say it.

He even vaguely recalled wanting to make Tony pay for his loss. But the chaotic feelings behind the memory seemed to have dissolved into thin air.

“I’m sorry,” Tony continued. “I’d make you a new heart right now...a much better one, to replace the one you gave up for me...but as you can see...”

He removed his gloves with some reluctance. Stephen soon saw why: there was a multitude of old, jagged surgical scars, trailing from the tips of his fingers to the middle of his forearms.

“My hands...”

Stephen took said hands in his own steady, reliable ones. He leaned forward across the table and pressed his lips to the backs of Tony’s shaking fingers.

“Forgive me.” _My savior._ “I’ll take care of your hands from now on.”


End file.
